Sunday, May 10, 2015

First Jet Warplanes

The Soviet Union's
first swept-wing fighter, and the Sabre's main rival in Korea, was the MiG-15,
also created with German research, and British jet engines.

USAF's first
swept-wing fighter, the F-86 Sabre, inspired by German wartime research, was
the mount for most Korean War "aces."

In the time since man first battled with his fellow man,
aerial warfare takes up a milli-second. Heavier-than-air flight is less than a
century old and it was not until 1910 that a military firearm was fired or a
dummy bomb dropped from an aeroplane in flight. In the following decade, World
War I accelerated aviation technology out of all recognition and airplanes had
become an important weapon.

In five short years, they had photographed the front line
from the air, sunk submarines, bombed capital cities, and pursued and shot down
other aircraft. Over the next two decades, military aviation marked time, with
developments of World War I biplanes being used by most air forces until war
clouds again loomed over Europe in the late 1930s.

From the first day of World War II, it was clear that aerial
warfare would play a crucial role in the outcome of the conflict. The German Blitzkrieg
unleashed over Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, and France swept all before
it. RAF fighter aircraft saved the British Isles from a German invasion during
the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, while the Japanese aerial attack
on Pearl Harbor just over a year later at first caught the world's most
powerful nation totally unprepared, but unleashed aerial retribution such as
the world had never witnessed before.

For the next five years, the race for superiority saw
unprecedented advances in aviation technology ranging from the development of
the jet engine, radar, aircraft carriers, airborne assaults, helicopters,
pressurized cockpits, and hydraulically operated folding wings for naval
aircraft. Weapon technology saw the introduction of 30mm cannons, flying bombs,
guided missiles, "Grand Slam" bombs, ballistic rockets, and the
atomic bomb.

By the end of the war, air power could now reduce the world
to a wasteland and an even longer struggle for air superiority was about to
begin. The dying months of the conflict had seen the so-called Allies involved
in a deadly race to capture German aviation designers, technicians, and the
experimental aircraft that they had been developing. The results of the
captured German research, which were divided between the victorious nations,
mainly the United States and the Soviet Union, were integrated with that
carried out by their own designers, paving the way for a quantum leap in
technology over the next decade.

The impetus for these advances was yet another war, one of a
different kind—the Cold War that "broke out" following the Soviet
blockade of Berlin in June 1948. This blockade was defeated by an unprecedented
US and British airlift to sustain the city that lasted for more than a year. US
and Soviet defense budgets mushroomed as the two "Superpowers" raced
to replace outdated World War II combat aircraft with state-of-the-art jet
warplanes. Some idea of the pace of change can be measured by the world
absolute air speed record which stood at 486mph (777kmh) at the end of the war
and would more than double in the next decade.

When communist North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950,
the conflict was about to test Soviet and US aviation technology as the Cold
War threatened to escalate into World War III. The latest combat aircraft from
both "Superpowers" faced each other in a desperate battle for air
superiority in the remote Southeast Asian skies. The most successful fighters
involved in the Korean War were very similar in design, size and performance.
Both the North American F-86 Sabre, which first flew in October 1947, and the
Soviet MiG-15 which flew a month later, benefited from German swept-wing
research while the Soviet fighter also utilized British jet-engine technology
by reverse engineering the Rolls Royce Nene. However, the US fighter had a
10-to-1 kill ratio over the MiGs by the time the conflict ended in July 1953,
the Sabre's ability to absorb battle damage, and the quality of its pilots,
being the deciding factors.

The Korean War further escalated the Cold War arms race. The
largest slice of the US defense budget at the time went to the US Air Force's
Strategic Air Command (SAC) which ordered more than 2,000 B-47 Stratojet global
mission bombers. The futuristic three-man nuclear bomber, powered by six
turbojets fitted in pods under a thin swept wing that again was based on German
research, had an unrefueled range of nearly 3,000 miles (4,800km). Vast amounts
of money was also being poured into the development of supersonic "second
generation" fighters which culminated in the American Century Fighter
series in the mid-1950s. The first of these was the F-100 Super Sabre which was
quickly followed by the F-101 Voodoo and F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta
Dart.

Labels

About Me

Mitch Williamson is a technical writer with an
interest in military and naval affairs. He has published articles in
Cross & Cockade International and Wartime magazines. He was
research associate for the Bio-history Cross in the Sky, a book about
Charles 'Moth' Eaton's career, in collaboration with the flier's son,
Dr Charles S. Eaton. He also assisted in picture research for John
Burton's Fortnight of Infamy.
Mitch is now publishing on the WWW various specialist websites combined
with custom website design work.